Loria of the Bound

23

Loria is a slender woman of average height, surprisingly healthy even after the most recent years of personal misfortune. Even though she’s somewhat muscled (compared to her former peers), she’s mostly suited to tasks of speed, agility and dexterity but isn’t particularly strong. She does well in (close quarters) combat due to some skill and a fierce demeanour. Her skin tone is naturally a nice tan, but as she is nowadays usually covered in some sort of dust, dirt and/or grime, coupled with her attire and various visible minor wounds, she has an overall rough appearance.
Those who know what to look for would see long thin spider-like fingers, angular facial features and a seemingly innate grace of movement and confidence of posture, all signs of someone born in one of the high castes, but all most see are the signs of a prisoner – a head shorn almost to the point of baldness, the simple but standardized clothing and perhaps the most damning sign; a brand of a runic letter on her left palm (near the base of the thumb) representing her crime (betrayal). She has black hair (what little there is of it), blue-grey eyes and wears dark grey trousers, sleeveless shirt and has a warm cloak for nights or cold days. After being released from imprisonment (to be sent on the Path of the Void), she was given some basic personal equipment and supplies (knife, dagger, backpack with spare clothes, first aid, water flask and such).

Her rather sheltered and mostly happy childhood has given her a solid foundation for good mental health even in adulthood, though she has long since grown out of her initial naivety. Loria retains some of the adventurous, curious and at times thrill-seeking spirit she had displayed in childhood, but those traits have been heavily tempered by her being disillusioned by reality. Her life experiences have shown her that her early good life was just an illusion her father had tried to maintain for them both. At her very core, Loria is now a determined survivalist.
The event that lead to her imprisonment revealed to her that she is quite temperamental under pressure. She suffers from mild insomnia due to her father, mother and ex-fiancé haunting her dreams in various life states (that is, alive, dead, as ghosts and everything in between). The less sleep she gets the more irritable she becomes and even as she curses this weakness, she can’t help but eventually succumb and resort to some sort of violence (preferably in a controlled manner/environment where it would cause least harm). This frustrates Loria particularly because she deeply believes in cooperation, tolerance and patience as the best basis for relationships with other people. Her time in prison made her much less trusting and she is now willing to only make allies, close acquaintances at best, perhaps tentative friendships in extreme and unlikely cases. She is proud of her heritage, but ashamed of her crime and will tell others that her reason for volunteering for the mission is to be accepted back into society (on the slim chance that she returns successful), however she is in truth on a search for atonement.

Loria was born in the Ar’revik hermit community of the Kraahr Mountains to the two people who were the Hand. Her community has always been led by a married pair who were the Hand together and as such, when Loria’s mother died about 5 years after her birth, her father – now a widower – became one of the Wise (considered an offshoot of the Path of the Hand and as such not a path switch). The Wise is a collective name for people who had either been on the Path of the Hand and hadn’t been chosen or people who had for some reason or another ceased being the Hand. The Wise serve as mentors, elders and advisors to others and are generally considered to be the bridge between the ruling and common folk. A person of the Wise is usually closest to one Path and their people. He or she may also choose to complete some of that Path’s trials if doing so would be more beneficial to cooperation with that specific group and to the whole community.
Even though Loria’s father was no longer the Hand, she was the heiress to one of those families expected to go on the Path of the Hand. Besides being on the Path of Knowledge alongside others, her father also passed down some of his expertise to her, which was culturally expected and more than acceptable. Loria was somewhat sheltered by her father but she gradually learned on her own that everything was nowhere nearly quite so well. She also had a penchant to sneak off with some other children to watch the Rangers, whom she admired (not at all uncommon), go on their missions and return from them.

As she entered her teen years, her father’s health began deteriorating and even though this affected them both negatively, Loria felt that they could get by as long as they had each other. She was eventually introduced to her (at that time) future fiancé, a heir to another prominent family, who would be her partner in their attempts to become the Hand. Loria’s first impressions were that her fiancé (a few years’ older male of the Seroux family) was cold-hearted, stand-offish and almost obsessed with becoming the Hand, but this hadn’t worried her initially.
She eventually completed her coming of age trial and officially got engaged to her fiancé. They began on the Path of the Hand, having to compete against tree other pairs in their generation (there were usually 3 – 8 pairs on this path per generation). However it was also at this time that Loria’s father’s health declined even further and soon after she had started on her Path with her fiancé, her father died. After this, Loria was left with practically no support – her fiancé was indifferent and at times rude and any other people she had been close to were busy with their own paths. The culmination of grief, stress, various rumours, accusation from her fiancé, lack of sleep and an eventual failure in one of their trials resulted in a remarkable argument between Loria and her fiancé in which she somehow or other injured him gravely, nearly causing his death. He did survive, but Loria (from too high a caste to be exiled) was imprisoned indefinitely.

The change from her life as a part one of the high castes in a community where cooperation was a highly practiced ideal, to the life of a prisoner where competition was rife and the culture was more similar to what one would expect of Wastelanders, was tremendous. There was a system in place where prisoners would be able to either return to society through earning trust and reputation of the people by completing various tasks and jobs or eventually be sent to the Wastes (which some found a preferable option). Prisoners competed amongst themselves – most for (better) living arrangements, some to get any job, others for what were considered the “best” tasks, some just because they wanted to be left alone and a few because they wanted in on an expedition to the Wastes. It was here that Loria picked up various skills and combat experiences, though she never became a master of any one particular thing (if she wanted to, she would have to return to society and officially start on a Path). Seeing the mission to the Void as the best available option, she volunteered, and due to the reputation (as being mostly reliable) she has earned during her years taking on various tasks as a prisoner, she was accepted. Even though she's quite experienced considering her age, she's ultimately unprepared for what it means to be in the outside world facing its dangers for any long periods of time.